Chickens

2009 Goals (or “How did we do?”)

Posted on December 31, 2009 at 9:40 pm

It is December 31, 2009, time to look at our 2009 Farm Goals. We did complete some and didn’t

I’ll start with the 2009 Farm Goals:
= COMPLETED
= Started but not completed
=No work done yet.

Put in a Garden – We had a great garden this year. The corn was delicious, the tomatoes did great, we had TOOOO much squash, we loved it. We have a lot of it canned in the pantry, and had some great veggies this summer. We have already started planning next years garden!

Build Layer Chicken Coop – We’re getting about 8 eggs a day now. LOVE IT!!!

Build Chicken Tractors – We built 2 chicken tractors and did almost 50 Cornish X on pasture and 4 turkeys. We have about 20 chickens still in the freezer and we canned a lot of the turkey and have many meals ready to go!

Attend/Enter 3 Alpaca Shows – Well, we didn’t go to any.

Visit 3 Fiber Mills – We didn’t go to any, maybe next year.

Neonatal Class

Get a Tractor – Yeah right! LOL

Build a Whizbang Garden Cart & Plucker – Well, we have the wood for the garden cart. I have started with some very handy friends getting what we need for the plucker. I’m sure with the help of Dan we’ll get this done soon!

Build Road to Back Pasture - Well, nope!

Run Water To Barn – Maybe this next year!!

Make Compost Bins –

Farm Days – Our farm day in September was wonderful. We had a lot of people stop by and had a great time. The news stopped by and we even made the 6:00 and 11:00 news!

Build a Fire Pit

Build a Skirting Table

Start a Monthly Movie Night- We’ve done pretty well with having a family movie night each month. It helped when we started getting Netflix!

CHICKEN & QUAIL UPDATE:

Our chickens are doing great. We have 8 laying hens & 3 three month olds out with Millie our rooster. We have 10 two month old chickens that we hatched out and 7 more chickens that just hatched out yesterday and today. So that gives us 29 chickens at this point.

We also started on quail this year. We have 6 laying hens with 2 male quail. We also have 13 three week old quail that are just about to start laying here in 2-3 weeks. That gives us 21 quail. We hope to start breeding and raising quail for meet.

ALPACA UPDATE:

We have 23 alpaca on property. 2 of them are being agisted here for our good friend Kim. We are so happy to have Brownie & Atom here with us. We also have 2 that will be leaving this week for their new home, Rogue and Zach. They were purchased by a great couple from Eugene a couple of months ago.

The rest of the alpacas are doing great. We had 5 babies this summer and we are looking forward to another great year. Thank you to all of our friends for the support they have given us this year. Look for our 2010 goals in just a few days!

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Cold Weather – Warm Water

Posted on December 7, 2009 at 11:46 pm

It has been extremely cold the last few days. It was around 10° this morning when I went out to check on the quail, chickens & alpacas. Right now it is 13° and getting colder tonight. We got tired last year of breaking ice on the alpacas water. This year with chickens and quails, we have more water so more water to break ice on.

I broke the ice yesterday on one of the alpacas tub, and this morning the water was already 2″ thick. It was time to do something. I started looking online at water heaters for livestock. They ranged from $30-$60 for each tub. We need at least 4 so each group of animals could have unfrozen water. I didn’t feel like paying $120 – $240 for this so it was time to do some research. Where do I go when I need to find a good soultion? BackYardChickens.com!!

A quick search I found a great and somewhat cheap solution. The solution is to use cookie tins with a light bulb inside. This will heat up the tin, and that will heat the water bucket (I hope!) On my way home from work I stopped at Bi-Mart and WalMart and found everything I needed for about $50. This included brand new drill bits (didn’t have a bit large enough for what I needed). The cheapest gift tins I could find were $4 a piece, BUT, the tins with cookies in the were $2.50 a piece so I bought 3, and took the cookies out. I also bought some lamp replacement kits, and put them in the tins. I wired them up, and all works good!

Here are some pictures:

The cookie tins we are using! YUMMY cookies!

Working on putting them together. You can see the larger tin at the top of the picture that I will use for the chicken water.

Getting closer to being done!

All done with 2 of them!

What the inside looks like. That’s a 40 Watt bulb. Should be enough (I hope!)

All 4 of them completed.

We have the all out under the water buckets. I’ll try and let you know tomorrow how they do! With how cold it is going to be tonight, they may not work no matter what, but maybe next week when it’s only cold, not BRRRRR cold!

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2 Comments on Cold Weather – Warm Water

Eggs!!

Posted on August 19, 2009 at 8:53 pm

We are starting to get eggs FROM MORE THAN JUST GOLDIE!!

We have been getting eggs from Goldie for most of the summer (except when she went broody, but that’s another boring story!) About 2 days ago we went out and found that our quail have now started laying eggs! Quail eggs are so small and cute!!!

quaileggs

Well, today I go out, and we have 2 chicken eggs!! I think, did I get Goldie’s egg from yesterday? YES!! Then I look closer at the 2 eggs, one is much smaller than the other! I am guessing that Dottie, our Silver Laced Wyandotte is laying eggs now! That means Wellie (our Wellsummer) isn’t far behind!!) Here are the 2 eggs for size comparison!

BEAUTIFUL!! Well, how do I know that it isn’t Wellie’s egg? Well, hers will be dark brown, not light brown. So I’m pretty sure it’s Dotties.

Here all the eggs together.

Need some eggs?

chickensig

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Don’t lick your lips!

Posted on August 1, 2009 at 10:35 pm

One of the first rules we heard about when you are butchering chickens is, “If you feel something wet on your lips, don’t lick your lips!!” I think this is a good piece of advice!

This week we have been butchering our meat chickens. We started out 8 weeks ago with 52 day old CornishX chicks. We lost about 15 to some animal digging in to our movable chicken tractor, so we ended up with 36 very large chickens! Here is a picture of them from about a week ago:

We did 6 on Monday, 6 on Wednesday, 6 on Thursday, 8 on Friday & 15 today! As you can see, that doesn’t equal to 36 chickens. We had 5 roosters from our egg laying chickens that we just didn’t need anymore, and it was time for them to move on to the Freezer Camp. So all in all we did 36 CornishX, 3 Buff Opringtons & 2 Black Australorps. They are all in the freezer (except for 2 that we are eating tomorrow) and our freezer is STUFFED!! Not even room for a cube of ice in there!

Looking forward to a great year of good chicken!!

chickensig

1 Comment

Great Contest!!

Posted on July 30, 2009 at 1:33 pm

If you have chickens, you need nest boxes (well, maybe you are only doing meat birds, then you wouldn’t need nest boxes). Life on a Southern Farm blog is doing another contest, giving away a 4-nest or 1-nest box that her husband builds.

They have a great story, I love it. He has a great skill in building things, and saw a need and started this great business. Congrats to them!

Maybe I’ll win this time!! I could use the 4-nest box!!

If I win, we’ll have a party!! You’re all invited!

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Cria #4 is Here!

Posted on July 24, 2009 at 10:22 pm

Announcing Silk Creek’s Oberon (maybe )

Here’s the Story. Julia, Lilian & Aislyn are out of town camping with Julia’s family. Georgia stayed home with me so she can go to a party on Saturday at her best friends house who is moving soon. With Julia gone, that put Georgia in charge of the animals while I have been at work this week. Georgia called me yesterday morning around 10:00 am asking if I had fed the dogs that morning. I asked her if she had checked the alpacas yet and she hadn’t. I was feeling that it was going to be yesterday since I had seen Milkyway rolling in the dirt early in the morning. This is normal for some of our alpacas, but not that normal for Milkyway. So I knew she was feeling uncomfortable. Georgia hung up and said she would go check on them.

About 90 seconds later, Georgia called back and frantically said that the baby was on the ground. She seemed a little stressed. I told her I would be right home and to go out and see if she could help the baby. It takes me about 35 min to get home from the time I leave my office. By the time I was home the baby was up walking around and nursing. All great signs. Georgia had dried him off and took good notes on times. We took his temperature and dipped his naval, and all was well. He was running around the pasture in no time.

I noticed that one of his front legs was slightly twisted out. Made a note to have the Vet look at it. Kept an eye on baby and mom the rest of the day. All went well. The other cria’s wanted him to play, and as long as he was close to his mom, he liked to play. He is a big one, 24 pounds. That is great!

Our Vet came today this afternoon to check him out. He is doing great except for the leg. He has very tight tendons in one of his front legs. Now Milkyway did NOT like that we were trying to put a splint on his leg. I was holding Oberon’s legs, and Milky freaked out. She started trying to bite my head, and the started spitting on us. Mainly got me right in the face. That is when we decided to take Oberon out of the barn near the hay to put the splint on. Gave him a couple of shots and drew some blood. We’ll get his IGg next week. I’m going to guess it’s good, but we’ll see.

Yesterday I also took a walk around the farm and took some other pictures that I thought I’d share.

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New Chickens

Posted on June 27, 2009 at 10:26 pm

A few weeks ago Lilian and I went to a BYC Chicken Swap in Salem. We had a great time meeting other chicken lovers, and seeing some chickens. We gave away one of our Buff Orp roosters, but we came home with some beautiful chickens.

First we came home with 3 chickens from a very nice lady in Bend (K7 on the board). 1 Blue Laced Red Wyandotte and 2 Speckled Sussex (to replace the one that we lost).

Then, a few days before the swap, a very nice lady (FrenchHen on the BYC Boards) said that she had 3 chickens that she was just giving away. They were mixes, and she thought maybe could be hens so I emailed her and said that I would take them if she was going to bring them to the swap. She was!! WOO HOO!! They turned out to be BEAUTIFUL!!! As we were getting ready to go, K7 said that she had an extra chicken she didn’t want to take back to Bend, so I said I would take it. I’m showing all 4 chickens together since I can’t remember exactly which one I got separately and which 3 came together (maybe Mary Beth can email me if she remembers!! )

Love the coloring and the spots on the feathers!!

I’m pretty sure this one came from FrenchHen. What a beautiful blue/silver!!

This one looks like she has flames going down her back!!

Kind of looks like our Silver Laced Wyandotte! Love the colors on this one!!

Thank you to K7 & FrenchHen! I love the new chickens! They are a great addition to our flock!

chickensig

Cornish Cross are outside!!

Posted on June 15, 2009 at 9:34 am

I had to move them out of the shop, THEY STUNK!!! All meat birds do is eat/sleep/poop (and not in that order!!!) Yesterday was the longest I could take them in the shop! They had to go! I put them out in the tractor (and added a heat lamp so they’ll have some extra heat for a week or so) and they seemed to enjoy getting on the grass.

I then cleaned out their brooder, and it was a mess! They had made a HUGE mess in just 2 weeks. I guess 52 chickens can do that pretty easily!

This morning I went out to check on them, and it looks like something tried to get in to their tractor, but didn’t. BUT, we did lose one. It looks like it got too close to the back wall, and whatever was trying to get in grabbed it and injured it. The rest were doing great this morning. I’ll add pictures later today!

Once again, Life On a Souther Farm blog is having another Chicken Nest Box giveaway! I sure hope I win this time. These nest boxes are beautiful!! Wish me luck!!

chickensig

One Week Later

Posted on June 8, 2009 at 9:38 pm

The CornishX chicks are now one week old today. WOW, how they have grown!!! Just look at that breast sticking out there!!

These things can eat!! And having 52 of them, they are sucking down the feed. I’ll keep them on 24 hour feed for the next week or so and then I’ll change them to 12 hours on feed/12 hours off feed to help slow the growth. I’ll be putting them in the tractor Julia and I built for them in about a week and a half on the 20th. Here are some pictures of Julia and I building the 2nd tractor.

We have the skids on and I’m getting ready to attach the en panels.

The end wall is now done ready to build the door and frame in the other end.

Attaching the door to the frame.

Getting the tarp on.

Snugging it down tight.

Towing it to the middle pasture where it will be for at least the first part.

Just waiting for the chickens to grow up!!

Here you can see how much the chickens have grown. Here is a picture I took last week when I brought them home. It is hard to tell but the chick was about 3.5″ tall at this point.

Here is a picture taken tonight. Yes, that chick is now almost 5″ tall. Pretty soon I’ll need a yard stick! LOL

Here are all of them tonight as well. I love that 3 of them are roosting. None have made it to the higher roost yet!

Here you can see the feeder I made for them because we were getting tired of going out ever few hours to fill up their feed. It is a 5 gallon bucket that I drilled 5 2″ holes in the bottom and the put the bucket in a plant tray. It is working out great!! Now I’ll probably only have to go out ever 4 or 5 hours to fix it (just kidding, I’m guessing it will last many, many days!!) I also built a waterer out of a 5 gallon bucket but I have that in with the laying chickens. I’ll take pictures of that later.

Now on to the other chickens. I am LOVING how the buff EE is turning out! She is BEAUTIFUL!!

Here is one of the Buff Orps checking to see if it’s safe to come in! That is the cuckoo maran out there with her.

Another Buff Orp just chillin!

I just added it up. Right now, we have 99 animals on property! 99!!! Can you believe it?! This Saturday we’re going to a BackYardChicken.com chicken swap up in Salem. I’m picking up at least 3 chickens, 1 Blue Laced Red Wyandotte and 2 Speckled Sussex. That will give us 102 animals!! WOW!! I can’t believe that we will actually own over 100 animals!! That is too cool!! (well in about 7 weeks you can take 52 animals off that list, we’ll still own them but they won’t be “living” on property at that point!)

chickensig

52 More Chickens

Posted on June 3, 2009 at 6:38 am

Yes, that is right, yesterday I picked up 52 more chickens! That brings our poultry total to 77 birds!!! That’s pretty cool!!

These new chicks are Cornish Cross (that’s a Cornish Rock crossed with something else). They are mainly raised as broilers or fryers. They will only be around for about 8 weeks, then they will be going off to “Freezer Camp”. They grow very fast, and within a couple of weeks they will be larger than our 2 month old chicks. They will be in the brooder for about 2 weeks and then we’ll move them out on the pasture for the last 6 weeks to let them have a natural diet of bugs, grass, etc.

Right now they are very cute!

But over time they won’t be as cute!! Looking forward to our first BBQ!!

chickensig

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